In another variant it is an acorn which is sown under the floor. From it springs an oak which grows to the skies. The old man of the story climbs up it in search of acorns, and reaches heaven. There he finds a hand-mill and a cock with a golden comb, both of which he carries off. The mill grinds pies and pancakes, and the old man and his wife live in plenty. But after a time a Barin or Seigneur steals the mill. The old people are in despair, but the golden-combed cock flies after the mill, perches on the Barin’s gates, and cries—
“Kukureku! Boyarin, Boyarin! Give us back our golden, sky-blue mill!”
The cock is flung into the well, but it drinks all the water, flies up to the Barin’s house, and there reiterates its demand. Then it is thrown into the fire, but it extinguishes the flames, flies right into the Barin’s guest-chamber, and crows as before. The guests disperse, the Barin runs after them, and the golden-combed cock seizes the mill and flies away with it.[389]
In a variant from the Smolensk Government, it is the wife who climbs up the pea-stalk, while the husband remains down below. When she reaches the top, she finds an izbushka or cottage there, its walls made of pies, its tables of cheese, its stove of pancakes, and so forth. After she has feasted and gone to sleep in a corner, in come three goats, of which the first has two eyes and two ears, the second has three of each of these organs, and the third has four. The old woman sends to sleep the ears and the eyes of the first and the second goat; but when the third watches it retains the use of its fourth eye and fourth ear, in spite of the incantations uttered by the intruder, and so finds her out. On being questioned, she explains that she has come “from the earthly realm into the heavenly,” and promises not to repeat her visit if she is dismissed in peace. So the goats let her go, and give her a bag of nuts, apples, and other good things to take with her. She slides down the pea-stalk and tells her husband all that has happened. He persuades her to undertake a second ascent together with him, so off they set in company, their young granddaughter climbing after them. Suddenly the pea-stalk breaks, they fall headlong and are never heard of again. “Since that time,” says the story, “no one has ever set foot in that heavenly izbushka—so no one knows anything more about it.”[390]
Clearer and fuller than these vague and fragmentary sketches of a “heavenly realm,” are the pictures contained in the Russian folk-tales of the underground world. But it is very doubtful how far the stories in which they figure represent ancient Slavonic ideas. In the name, if not in the nature, of the Ad, or subterranean abode of evil spirits and sinful souls, we recognize the influence of the Byzantine Hades; but most of the tales in which it occurs are supposed to draw their original inspiration from Indian sources, while they owe to Christian, Brahmanic, Buddhistic, and Mohammedan influences the form in which they now appear. To these “legends,” as the folk-tales are styled in which the saints or their ghostly enemies occur, belongs the following narrative of—
The Fiddler in Hell.[391]
There was a certain moujik who had three sons. His life was a prosperous one, and he laid by money enough to fill two pots. The one he buried in his corn-kiln, the other under the gate of his farmyard. Well, the moujik died, and never said a word about the money to any one. One day there was a festival in the village. A fiddler was on his way to the revel when, all of a sudden, he sank into the earth—sank right through and tumbled into hell, lighting exactly there where the rich moujik was being tormented.
“Hail, friend!” says the Fiddler.
“It’s an ill wind that’s brought you hither!”[392] answers the moujik; “this is hell, and in hell here I sit.”
“What was it brought you here, uncle?”